Google, Facebook, Yahoo unite in transparency push

Web giants want to be able to say more on government requests

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Google Inc., Facebook Inc. and Yahoo Inc., fierce competitors on the Web, this week formed a united front to push for more government transparency.

Yahoo
YHOO, +0.85%
on Monday said it has filed a suit in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “demanding the right to publicly disclose the number of user data requests that we receive from the U.S. Government under national security statutes.”

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Google is pushing for more government transparency.

Also on Monday, Google
GOOG, +1.29%
said it has filed an amended petition to the controversial court also demanding that the company be “allowed to publish detailed statistics about the types (if any) of national security requests we receive under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”

Facebook
FB, +0.46%
on Monday announced that it has joined other companies in making the same demand, arguing in a blog post, “We believe there is more information that the public deserves to know, and that would help foster an informed debate about whether government security programs adequately balance privacy interests when attempting to keep the public safe.”

“Although we have been permitted to disclose a range of the total number of requests we have received and the number of users associated with those requests, we have not been permitted to specify even approximately how many of those requests may be national security-related, nor have we been permitted to provide information identifying the number of those requests that seek the content of users’ accounts,” Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch wrote.

The transparency push comes in the wake of revelations of a massive government-data mining operation led by the National Security Agency.

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